


Per Manum Flashback #1

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [154]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Infertility, Light Angst, MSR, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 12:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10020794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf
Summary: Filling the gap between "I just have to figure out how to ask him" and "Obviously you've had some time to think about my request."





	

_“Well, you need a father, of course. I can get you genetic counseling on finding an anonymous donor, if that’s what you want… unless you already have someone in mind.”_  
_“Yeah… I, uh… I just have to figure out how to ask him.”_

This is all happening so fast.

She’d only wanted to know if it would be possible. Someday. Not necessarily right now. She knew that the abduction and experimentation had left her unable to conceive, and for a long time she’d accepted her fate. But lately, since she and Mulder have become intimate, she can’t help thinking more and more about _what-if._ It’s led her to question the specifics of her infertility: would her body be capable of carrying a pregnancy to term if she used a donor egg, for example. Simple information gathering.

But then yesterday Mulder dropped the bombshell on her about the ova he stole from the Lombard Research Facility, almost three years ago. Actually, “bombshell” is far too sedate a word. He stole her ova, secretly had them tested, never told her when they were deemed inviable, _and then kept them hidden in his freezer anyway_. 

But despite the odds, Dr. Parenti seems to think there's a chance. And a time window that's rapidly closing. Which means that “someday” just became “now.” And _that_ means she has to figure out how to ask Mulder the question she thought she might have years to plan, if she ever had to ask it at all.

What if he's not ready for that? God, _she_ is barely ready, and she wants it so badly she can hardly breathe. What will she do if he says no? 

What if this breaks them?

She can't ask him in person, she realizes. If he turns her down, she won't be able to hide her disappointment, and she doesn't want him to feel guilted into saying yes if he truly doesn't want this. No, he needs time, and privacy, to think it over and make his own decision. She will write him a letter and drop it off at the office.

And now she still has to figure out how in the hell to ask the biggest question of her life.

***

He's been distracted all damned day.

She left for the evaluation hours ago. If she's been gone this long… it has to have been bad news, right? She's taking a walk again, because there is no way those ova are still viable. Why in the hell did he keep them?

(The answer to that one is stupid but also simple: he couldn't bear to just throw away what they symbolized.)

God, the look on her face this morning when he gave her the insulated bag… she could barely meet his eyes. It was like she couldn't decide whether to thank him or say she never wanted to see him again. He's never felt so dirty. To see her faith in him shaken like that, learning that he had kept something so huge hidden from her… well, it's a good thing the brain meds are still helping. With any luck, he can take _that_ secret all the way to the grave, hopefully a good fifty years from now.

He realizes he's been staring at the door again and grimaces, turning back to the article in front of him. He's been trying to get through the first paragraph for the better part of an hour. With a sigh, he pushes his chair back and stands, stretching his back and turning around to look at the wall behind his desk. He raises his arms and interlaces his fingers behind his head, tapping with his thumbs on the back of his neck as the fear he’s been dancing around all day finally reveals itself.

What if being with him is just a constant reminder of what she can never have, of what he kept from her? They’ve been through so much together, but what if this is the one thing she can’t move past?

What if this breaks them?

“Mulder?”

He whips around, and she looks so small, standing in the doorway. 

There’s a rushing in his ears, and his vision seems to contract and focus, as if his brain is telling him _Pay attention! This. This is one of those moments. Nothing will be the same after this._

She walks forward slowly, hesitantly, one hand in her coat pocket. He wonders if she can hear his heart hammering in his chest from across the room.

“I, uh… I’m going to take the rest of the day off.”

“Everything okay?”

She looks down. “Yeah, I just… well, this will explain.” 

She pulls a folded sheet of paper from her pocket and holds it out toward him. It flutters ever so slightly in her hand, and he _knows_. She’s leaving him. This has all been too much for her, and she can’t even work with him anymore, and that’s why she’s been gone all day, because she was upstairs talking to Skinner about reassignment. His knees threaten to turn to water, and it’s all he can do to stay upright.

“That’s, ahem, that’s not a ‘Dear John’ letter, is it?” He’s aiming for flippant, but it comes out cracked and shaky. He is rapidly coming to grips with the very real possibility that he is going to throw up.

She snaps her eyes back up to his, and the genuine confusion in them is the last thing he expected. “What?! No. _God_ no, Mulder, what-- Why on Earth would you think that?”

“I… I thought you…” He’s so thrown, he can’t even get the words out. “You’re not leaving?”

“I’m taking the rest of the _day_. That’s all. I wanted to give you some space because--”

He doesn’t even let her finish, walking around the desk to wrap her in his arms, to hell with the open door. The relief flooding through him brings tears to his eyes, and he blinks them back before they can fall and embarrass him any more than he’s already managed to embarrass himself.

“Mulder, you’re shaking. What’s wrong?”

“Too much time spent in my own head today, I guess,” he mumbles. He takes a deep breath, then releases her, stepping backward to lean against the desk. “I was sure I’d screwed everything up.”

“No. No, you haven’t screwed anything up. If anything, I’m the one--” She bites off the rest of the sentence, shaking her head. She looks down again at the paper still in her hands, turning it over a few times. His heart is back in his throat, but instead of being certain of what’s coming next, now he has no earthly clue. “There’s something I need to ask you, and I don’t want you to feel obligated to say yes if you’re not comfortable with it. So I, I wrote it down, and… and I’ll let you have some time to think about it.”

She holds the paper toward him once more, steadier this time. He takes it from her slowly, then starts to unfold it.

“No, don’t… Don’t read it yet. Please. That’s… that’s sort of the whole reason I wrote it down, so I wouldn’t be here when you--”

“Okay.” He sets it down on the desk behind himself, then puts his hands in his pockets. His curiosity is tempered by dread. _What in the hell could possibly be so bad that she can only ask him in writing? That she can’t even be here when he reads it?_ His mind is already off to the races again, and he searches her face for any sort of a clue as to what this is all about.

“Thank you. I, um… I’ll get out of your way, and… I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

He nods, trying to interpret the combination of fear and hope in her voice and posture. He wants to go to her, to hug her again and tell her that whatever she’s afraid of, it’s going to be okay. That he can’t conceive of anything he wouldn’t do for her. But she’s already on her way out the door, and he’s also desperate to read whatever this is that she’s given him.

She pulls the door shut behind her as she leaves, ostensibly to give him privacy, but it feels like she’s cut herself off from him, and he can hardly stand it. Heaving a sigh to steady himself, he goes back around to his chair and sits. When he unfolds the paper, her handwriting covers the entire page.

> _Dear Mulder,_
> 
> _It’s hard to know where to begin. We go through life thinking we can plan things, thinking we have control. And to some extent, I suppose that’s true, but then there are the things that blindside us. Events and circumstances we never saw coming, which alter the courses we thought we’d set for ourselves._
> 
> _When I was first told I would never have children, I grieved. It’s strange; even though having a family is never guaranteed anyway, to have even the possibility of it taken out of my hands completely, it shook me in a way I didn’t anticipate. It took some time to make peace with it, but I eventually did. I accepted my new reality and tried to move forward._
> 
> _And then things changed again._
> 
> _Things changed with us, and I found myself longing once more for what could never be. Only this time, idle daydreams began to take on even more concrete forms. A little girl with my hair and your eyes. A little boy with my freckles and your smile. Emily, whole and healthy and untouched by whatever terrible design was in her making._
> 
> _And even if that could never be, if my half of the genetic equation were missing, I couldn’t help thinking about what might be possible with a donor egg, if the circumstances of my infertility might not be as all-encompassing as they first seemed._
> 
> _I know that it was probably a mistake to begin quietly investigating this without talking to you about it. I just thought, if it turned out that it was still impossible, then there would have been no reason to discuss it at all. Instead, much to my surprise, here we are._
> 
> _This morning, my doctor examined the ova that you gave me. He is optimistic that, given the advances in technology even in the past couple of years, they may in fact be viable after all. Or, more specifically, that one of them may be. There is a chance, he says. Maybe not a very big one, but a chance nonetheless. He does, however, suggest that we begin the process right away. I am still coming to grips myself with the speed at which everything has changed yet again._
> 
> _Which brings me to the question I still find myself afraid to ask. I understand that there have been certain expectations about the circumstances of our relationship. Children were not supposed to be part of the equation. I don’t know if you even want them, and I want to be clear that you are in no way obligated to take this on with me. This is my decision, and I take full responsibility for it._
> 
> _I cannot, however, provide both halves of a genome myself. My doctor said he will help locate an anonymous donor unless I already had someone in mind, and it would be a lie to claim that there is even a question of which person I would choose, if the choice were mine alone. Even if faced with this decision a year ago, before things changed between us, my answer would have been the same._
> 
> _But it is not my decision to make alone._
> 
> _Mulder, I do not want you to feel beholden to me, or sorry for me, or to agree out of guilt or duty or pity. This is why I couldn’t ask you in person. I need you to know, to fully understand, that it is okay for you to say no. It is not going to change anything between us if you are uncomfortable with this. I can only hope that my asking this of you at all will not somehow damage the way you see and feel about me._
> 
> _Please think about it. Take as much time as you need._
> 
> _-Dana_

He sits back in the chair, realizing as the room spins around him that he barely breathed while reading her letter. 

A chance of viability. How is that possible?

The entire world has been flipped on its ear. He knew she was sad about not being able to have kids, but he never really grasped the extent of it. And now to have this chance, one chance, however small…

And she wants him. Or she wants his genes, anyway. What was it he told her once, about the Mulder family more or less passing genetic muster?

The thing of it is, he’s never really seen himself as a father. Bill Mulder was not exactly a shining example of paternal excellence. He likes kids well enough, but… it seems completely impossible that he wouldn’t screw up if he tried to raise one. And how could he live with himself, screwing up this thing that Scully wants more than anything in the world?

On the other hand, how can he say no to her? For all that she claims she would be okay with it, there is no denying it will hurt her terribly if he refuses.

He needs to move. He needs to get out of this office and move around, sort everything out in his head. Pushing back from the desk, he stands, folding the letter and putting it in his pocket. He grabs his coat and keys and heads out for a walk.

***

He is so lost in thought that he doesn’t even notice when the sun goes down.

He’s been walking for hours, slowly winding his way north and west without any conscious destination in mind, but when he finally looks up and sees where he is, it’s no great surprise to find himself about six blocks from Scully’s apartment.

What _does_ surprise him is that he thinks he actually has an answer for her. It’s taken a long time to find clarity, and there are still so many things he’s unsure about, but he’s nearly ready to tell her yes. There is only one small thing holding him back.

He doesn’t want to be “just” a donor. 

As much as he’s afraid of screwing up, he’s discovered that the idea of being a dad actually appeals to him a lot more than he ever realized. But Scully has made it clear that she is running point on this. What if she doesn’t want him to have such an active role? What if whatever emotional place he has in her life right now is usurped once she has a child? 

Some part of him realizes that’s crazy. She loves him. Lots of people have children without it tearing them apart. And if there’s anybody in the whole damned world he would want to try parenthood with, it would be Dana Scully.

He pulls out his phone, his finger hovering over the speed dial. He doesn’t _have_ to give her an answer tonight. He could go home and sleep on it. But he’s right here. And she’s probably half out of her mind wondering what he thinks about all this. And if he lets himself think about it too much, he might get scared and change his mind. No, better to tell her now.

She answers after one ring with a breathless, “Hello?”

“Hey, Scully. It’s me. Is it okay if I swing by your place for a minute?”

“S-sure. Yeah, of course.”

“Thanks. See you soon.”

He hangs up, glad he’s still got six blocks to walk off the butterflies that have just started a conga line in his stomach. He’ll make it quick. In and out, grab a cab back to the office, since he left his car there and also has managed to do zero actual work today. They are going to need to have an actual talk about it sometime, but not tonight. Tonight, he’ll just tell her yes.


End file.
